MasterChef Australia has returned to the air for its thirteenth
season. I have decided to do something that I’ve wanted to for a long time -
write in way too much detail about this show I tend to get to get too invested
in for a normal person.
Funny / satirical reviews of Masterchef Australia are not a
new thing – there are hundreds of twitter accounts dedicated to this and
several popular websites and blogs as well. My two favourites are Michelle Rennex (a culture writer at Junkee who writes on a lot more than just Masterchef)
and Ben Pobjie (who writes not just some super funny articles, but also some great poems on his website). Since I am nowhere close to them in writing
talent, I felt I should try do the same thing they do. Which is of course the
totally normal, logical thing to do.
That said - I don’t intend to make a clone of what they do,
but you might see some similarities as some of my fandom might creep into my
writing.
I intend to post reviews as the week goes on (it may be 1 article
per episode or 1 for the whole week – depends on my bandwidth). Honestly I
don’t know if I have the perseverance or time to do this all season – but while
in lockdown, let’s see how far we get.
Most of these posts will seem like rants, mostly because that is exactly what they will be. Sorry, not sorry. At other times, the posts will seem like what should have been a collection of tweets. Either way, the point I'm making is that this is not meant to be some showcase of great food writing - just me having fun and throwing out whatever comes to my mind in the form of blogposts with some semblance of regularity.
Before we get into the actual reviews, a quick recap of the
previous season. And by that I mean that I want to rant about the new judges.
After S11, we were left with 1 big, 1 medium and 1 small
hole in the shapes of Matt, Gary and George. The beloved judges left because of
some pay dispute[1].
Anyway coming to the new judges – I was (and still am), in a word, unimpressed.
Jock Zonfrillo is a legit big name chef and runs one of the
best restaurants in Australia and he seems fit for the part for sure, but the
other two are just meh. It seems that Masterchef Australia have decided that
the best way to stop the tailspin of the ratings for this season is the stuff
the thing with nostalgia – and they may have taken it too far to basically get
judges using the same criteria they did for S1 i.e. one highly accomplished
senior chef (Gary / Jock), one well-known but not quite iconic food critic
(Matt / Melissa) and one young chef in his 30s who has just started to make it
big (George / Andy). There is however one small problem – those are not the
judges you are replacing now – they
have grown in stature like only judging the country’s most popular cooking show
for 11 years can do for you. So now they have replaced 3 icons with 1 icon and
2 other people. Big, big fail. Apparently Channel 10 were trying to get Curtis
Stone, Maggie Beer and Shannon Bennett to be the judges – but they all declined
on account of their other commitments. Again, Jock is great, but we are kinda
stuck with the other two.
Melissa is mediocre at best and tries too hard. She always
come up short in any comparison with Matt Preston – and isn’t as insightful or
sharp in her knowledge and critique of food. I completely support the idea of
gender diversity in the judges but fail to see why they didn’t go for someone
like Kristin Tibbels, Anna Pavolou or Kylie Kwong – all better options than
Melissa Leong. In S12, I particularly didn’t like how she tended to gravitate
to all the Asian contestants and particularly hated how all her commentary was
on the person rather than the dish. She liked stuff because it was “honest” or “she
could see the passion” or “it celebrated the heritage” rather than the usual
good qualities of food in that it should taste good.
In general it seems like getting a former winner back to the
show is a weird idea – and sure, Andy Allen is reasonably successful but to
judge this show? Really? I mean this guy
got his arse kicked by Sandeep Pandit (30 vs 24) cooking with Lemon in S11. Also
if you watched S12, you know why I mostly just fast forward every time he
starts talking. Zero value add, and mostly just parrots what Jock says. Let’s hope
he has done some homework before S13.
The season itself was quite entertaining – mostly on account
of all the super popular contestants who were brought back to the show instead
of actual home cooks which is what the show has always been about. Personally, while
I was ok with the list of participants, but I would have liked to see some
super talented cooks who didn’t quite make it to win their respective seasons.
Some of my picks would have been Jessica, Sara and Matthew from S7, Mimi, Trent,
Brett from S8, Karlie and Eloise from S9, Samira and Ben from S10.
Even though the season was hit and miss for me (some
memorable, truly fun episodes, and some really, really boring episodes that I
couldn’t even get through), that fact that I watched the whole thing as
obsessively as I did previous seasons, shows that either I have no standards or
the format works at a deeper level than I initially thought. Some other things
that stood out was some of the favoritism that came through – Poh survived for
way too long on her popularity, some great cooks got the short end of the
stick, I was livid with the way Amina was eliminated (twist week was the single
worst idea the showrunners have ever had – and this includes their choice of
judges), somehow Tessa, Sarah T and other super strong cooks never really got
going – or the judges simply didn’t like them no matter what they did, Laura
seemed to get a very long rope in the initial parts of the show, . In the end,
I was super happy Emilia won – I would have lost it if they gave it to Poh or
Callum as it made no sense to me that 2 big public figures from Australia’s
food scene were taking part in this in the first place.
I want the show to be as good as it was – and I hope it does
reach those levels, or at least comes close in S13. And if not, at least I will
have a lot of material to make fun of.
Cheers and see you in Episode 1.
[1] Or
at least that’s the official story, though some have speculated that it may
have had something to do with George’s legal troubles
You put the the exact thoughts that i had on the judges. Also the Poh surviving for long, damn that was hard to watch. But to be able to see so many of our favourites back from the earlier seasons was enough for me to see through the shitty panel of judges. You forgot to mention the annoying yelling of Jock as his USP on the show, uggh. i honestly have very low expectations from S13, hoping the strong format makes it interesting
ReplyDelete